Seitz: Don't waste tax dollars on frivolous complaint

The "chorus" allegedly calling for a new investigation of anonymous charges made against me months ago – charges I’ve been completely exonerated from – is actually a solo being orchestrated by "guest columnist" Scott Peterson.

Who is he? An out-of-state blog writer whose self-described mission is "holding government officials who block the growth of a sustainable economy accountable to the public."

Peterson could engage me in an honest debate about his green energy agenda. For example, he could try to defend his insistence on wind turbine siting standards that place 476-foot-tall wind turbines only 524 feet away from the nearest neighbor’s property line. But that would require him to explain why, just last weekend, a 10-foot metal shard off a broken wind blade in northern Ohio flew 825 feet from the turbine before embedding itself in the ground.

For 10 years, I have fought for safe siting of wind farms – successfully – so folks like Peterson oppose me in their ambition to stick ratepayers with higher electric rates in support of their renewable energy mandates.

But no, Peterson instead chooses to engage in factless character assassination, claiming the investigation by independent counsel of my remarks at a January roast was somehow conflicted, even though that investigation cleared me of any claim of harassment. Peterson was the one who filed the grievance against the Taft firm hired to investigate me.

Peterson’s been colluding with a couple Democratic state representatives to resurrect this dead story. Peterson claims the Attorney General should "order a new, independent investigation" but the Attorney General’s office has publicly stated that it has no power to do so absent a request from the legislature. And, as The Enquirer noted in its sidebar to Peterson’s column, the House Speaker states, “There will be no further investigation.”

Here, then, are the relevant facts for readers to evaluate, and questions left unanswered by Peterson and his leftist allies:

FACT: Not a single person who attended the January off-site roast has complained that anything I said constituted sexual harassment.

QUESTION: So what, then, is there to investigate if the only anonymous complainant was not in attendance and admitted hearing about it only from a blog writer who admitted that he wasn’t there either? If my jokes at a roast attended by over 100 people were "widely interpreted as demeaning to women," as Peterson lamely claims, then why did no one who heard these remarks firsthand ever complain?

FACT: I haven’t worked at the Taft firm in four years and now am with its competitor, Dinsmore & Shohl. A law firm is expressly permitted to be adverse to a former client (to whom it owed fiduciary duties) as long as there is no substantial relationship between the current case and the prior representation (Ohio Rules of Professional Conduct 1.9).

QUESTION: If a law firm can be adverse to a former client, what prevents a law firm from being adverse to a former employee on matters unrelated to his employment at the firm?

FACT: The Taft firm lawyers who investigated the complaint have never contributed to me. They never worked with or for me on any matter while I was with their firm.

QUESTION: If Democrat Steve Dettelbach can be attorney general prosecuting opioid cases when his law firm represents the very defendants he would be prosecuting (on the basis that he erected a Chinese wall between himself and the firm lawyers representing those defendants), then why is it a conflict for Taft lawyers who I never met to investigate the complaint against me four years after I left the firm entirely?

FACT: The Taft PAC and individual lawyers other than those assigned to do the investigation have contributed to my political campaign committees over the years.

QUESTION: If campaign contributions create a disqualifying conflict, where is Peterson’s indignation over the fact that most of the lawyers and investigators who are actively investigating President Trump as part of the Mueller investigation (and the prior Clinton email investigation) had made political contributions to Mrs. Clinton? Should they be disqualified, and if not, why not?

FACT: During the roast, I made remarks about former Rep. Diana Fessler and current Rep. Candice Keller. Rep. Fessler not only was not offended; she said no apology was even necessary. Rep.Keller filed no complaint once she realized that I had said nothing detrimental about her at all (sexual or otherwise) – she had been misinformed, as she was not present either. The anonymous complainant (who admits she wasn’t there) refused to cooperate in the independent investigation, as the Taft report noted.

QUESTION: I end where I started. What is there to investigate? And why waste more taxpayer dollars investigating a frivolous, politically motivated anonymous complaint?

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